This morning Davies and Scarlett had another episode in their rather workshop-tastic few weeks with a Roald Dahl Storybook workshop at Worthing Museum. I knew Toby was going along too and it turned out another home educated friend, Alex was also there.
I hadn’t decided whether to stay or not and when I asked the woman running the workshop what her preference for parents to do was she said she didn’t mind either way. I ended up staying for the first half of the session and then leaving for the second half as I needed a new battery for my watch so walked down into the town to get that and have a quick peep in some charity shops.
The workshop was good although Davies and Scarlett both said they felt there was too much to do in too little time. They were all given a 10 section storyboard and a 10 page book and the task was to create a storybook in the style of / inspired by / using characters or plotlines from Roald Dahl’s stories. There were various examples of his books, plotlines from some of them, illustrations (Quentin Blake ones mostly) and other prompts. Laura (the woman running the event) also showed the children how Blake does his watercolours using pencil, gone over with pen, watercolour then blotted off and she used an overhead projector as a lightbox which I thought was a nifty idea. She also had the fab idea of a clothes rail with plastic sheeting taped to it vertically so someone could stand behind it and you could draw their outline and details with a marker pen.
Davies very quickly came up with an idea for a mouse in a wood (he wanted something a bit like in The Gruffalo he said) who got scared by what he thought was a monster but was actually a machine chopping down trees. The man operating the machine would then save the mouse from harm. Davies said he wanted a story that seemed simple to us but would be a real adventure from the mouse’s perspective. I liked the way he thought it out :).
Scarlett struggled a bit but wanted to have a story about Candle our cat going to a museum. She was resistant to following the formula that Laura had which Dahl apparently used of 1. characters 2. location 3. event 4. ending when writing his stories and instead wanted less of a plotline and more a succession of pictures showing Candle going round a museum. We talked about different museums we have been to; little local ones, big London ones, museums for transport, animals, science, costumes, architecture, archeaology, local areas, industries etc. She chose the Natural History museum. I mooted the idea of Candle visiting all the stuffed animals around the museum and then at the end coming across another real animal visiting the museum but she went with just a cat visiting a museum :).
At that point they were both industriously working away so I nipped off for half an hour or so.
When I came back they were just finishing and had done really well. I love Davies’ front cover:
And my favourite of Scarlett’s is Candle seeing the blue whale at NatHist museum:
They had a quick go at the plastic sheet drawing too each
Both the children said they really enjoyed the workshop and indeed have been inspired to work together to make another book when we got home later. I did speak briefly to Laura at the end about a Home ed workshop during term time and she seemed quite up for the idea. Nice to find something so close to home for once :).
Which brings us to the afternoon. We’d booked to go on a dinosaur walk in Hastings last week but it was cancelled due to poor weather and we couldn’t make the alternate date. For some reason I had in my head we couldn’t make the second proposed date of this afternoon either but when a call went out yesterday for anyone else wanting to take places I realised we could get there if we went straight from the Dahl workshop so I grabbed 3 places and that was where we went. Hastings is about 50 miles away, a good hour plus drive but obviously a very historic part of England. It is also somewhere with strong family connections on my Dad’s side as his mother lived there and even had a shop there and it was somewhere I believe Dad lived for a while with an aunt when he first came down to Sussex from North Wales where he’d grown up. It’s not somewhere I’ve spent much time however and whilst I know I have been there before it didn’t seem at all familiar driving through it. Infact I suspected we’d driven too far and was worrying about being late when suddenly I spotted the road we were looking for and signs for the museum we were meeting at. We found a parking space and walked across, spotting Dani, Pearl and Leo already there. Nice to see them :). It was a fairly small group of people, I think the previous session had had more people. We had a quick look round the little museum first, it is mainly shipwreck finds and information, there are loads of little museums dotted all along the south coast for various things, very charming and pretty ad hoc. Ken, the archaeologist who was leading us first showed us some fossils he’d found along with some casts of dinosaur footprints, talked about what we can learn from finding fossils – environmental information, plant and animal life, which creatures lived when and so on. He showed us some pictures of what Hastings might have been like in dinosaur times and then we went out fossil hunting! 🙂
We clambered down the rocks onto the beach and Ken led us along pointing out interesting things, giving us little geological facts and hints and tips and identifying all the finds everyone had.
He split open various rocks we brought him and I think most people found something of interest. Dani had the very best find when Ken split a rock she’d brought him and it uncovered a whole layer of fossils, like opening an uninterestingly wrapped gift and finding a fab present inside 🙂
Scarlett found an interesting rock which when split had a bivalve inside
which Ken made smaller so she could bring home with us. Davies found several things including a stone which Ken said might be jasper and a rock with chalk and mineral fossils on it.
It was a really good couple of hours, great to spend time with someone so passionate and knowledgable and happy to share his time and passion with us. And cheap too – we only paid a fiver each for the children :).
The drive home felt longer although the traffic wasn’t too bad. I’d started to slump rather 🙁 My cough and blocked nose is persisting and I now have a mild earache / sore throat which I can’t decide is a possible infection or simply from coughing. My worry is that if it’s an infection it won’t be getting better by itself and I still have a very busy week ending with swimming 75 lengths which could well be really hard if I’m still unwell. I’m working tomorrow so will have to make a grown up decision on Friday about whether to continue with another busy day as planned to whether to be sensible and rest instead. I suspect unless I am feeling dreadful I won’t make any sort of grown up decision mind you ;).
Davies and Scarlett went off to make books while I got them some tea and then did some baking to use up some eggs. I made two batches of brownies; one with nuts (for Ady and I) and one with out (for Davies and Scarlett) and a double batch of snickerdoodles too. Then I ran out of caster sugar so that put paid to further sweet baking and a lack of cheese had already prevented anything savoury.
I tidied up the kitchen, Ady came home – and went back out again to get cheese for dinner tonight (pizza), I ran a bath, hoovered and lit a fire while the kids tidied up then we read some ‘I was a rat’ until my throat got too sore and they went to bed.
Ady and I watched Coast while we had our dinner and learnt about the Great Western Railway which runs right along the shoreline in Devon and Cornwall. We liked the idea of that lots and thought we might try and visit for a ride sometime this summer.
Am now taking my cough to join Ady’s cough in bed.